


Just One

by itsslightlypsychic



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Feels, Gen, Skye's birthday, this is definitely mostly angst, this poor tortured family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4258515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsslightlypsychic/pseuds/itsslightlypsychic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>July 2, 2001.  </p><p>Alone after Jiaying leaves him, Cal remembers the best day of his life and the years that follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just One

July 2nd, 2001.

Somehow, everything ended up broken, and Cal hated the things that were broken.  He was a doctor, dammit; his job was to fix things, not destroy them, but his wife had walked out two weeks ago, and with the slam of the door as she left, she’d shattered the fragile remains of their family.  In the end, she blamed everything on him.

 Beside him, the fragmented remains of the home they’d shared littered the ground.  Three splintered chairs lay in the corner on top of what had been the kitchen table like kindling.  He might consider lighting them.  What had been plates, couch cushions, even books covered the floor, the evidence of nightly rages when he realized again that Jiaying wouldn’t return, repentant.  For two weeks, he’d been out of control.  He was frustrated at his failure to keep his family together, to seek vengeance for those who broke it, and he took it out on the things that had represented their life together.

The piles of glass suddenly caught the sunlight, breaking it into thousands of rays that bounced off the walls.  Cal turned his head to look, and realized he’d smashed every single photo frame they’d had.  He hadn’t meant to—the pictures were supposed to remain untouched, along with the tiny pajamas and blankets in the box in the corner.  He got up from the floor slowly and lumbered over to where the glass lay in the corner.  Only a few photos mattered, really, and he wanted them secure, not treated like garbage.

Cal knelt by the pile, hands delicate in the shards.  Careful not to scratch the pictures or his hands, he slowly brushed away the glass, the cracked balsa wood that had held it together.  He almost tore the first photo he found in two.  His face shone proudly out of the picture, one arm around Jiaying, her pregnancy just beginning to show.  It had been taken on their wedding day, in February of 1988.  Unable to bear the happiness in the picture, he threw it aside.  Those weren’t the ones he was looking for.

He found them after five minutes of painstaking clearing.  They’d been in a frame together, and they were his favorites, just him and the baby.  The first, taken the day after she was born, showed him, exhausted and grinning, holding her wrapped in a bundle of blankets.  The second was taken a few months later, after she’d learned to smile.  They had identical smiles in this one; he had just taken her out of her high chair, and they were both covered in some kind of green mush.  He remembered that, how funny he’d found it that she preferred wearing dinner to eating it.  Now, he didn’t laugh.  Instead, he folded the picture inside his breast pocket.  Holding the first, he picked himself up off of the floor and left to buy another frame.

It was burning hot when he left the home goods store down the road, and Cal remembered that it was summer.  The sign in front of the bank proudly stated that it was 89 degrees.  It was 2:07 in the afternoon.  It was July 2nd.

Cal punched a mailbox.  He stared at the dent, hands stinging.  How had he let himself forget?

At first, he and Jiaying had commemorated the day with tears and what if and could-have-been.  Eventually, that faded into extra dedication to their work, a little more vehemence in their task.  They no longer mentioned it, but every year they remembered.

Daisy would have been a teenager today.  He wondered whether or not she was celebrating somewhere, if she even knew it was her birthday.  She should know.  She should have been celebrating with him.  He felt like screaming.  Instead, he stormed up to the apartment, to the wreck of what had been his life.    

There was nothing left to break.  His entire life was broken; his heart was broken.  He was shattered like the three dining chairs.  It always had been three, even when it was two, even now, when it was one.  So Cal sat, his back against the wall, still holding the bag with the frame, thinking of nothing but his daughter.

He remembered the first birthday, in 1988, Jiaying walking into their bedroom where he was reading, perfectly serene.  “Cal,” she’d said, “I think it’s time.”  He’d panicked, predictably.  They had been excited.

He remembered running to find the car, two houses over, remembered cursing all of the reasons that he hadn’t at least mastered “borrow” and “car” and “I’ll double what I usually pay” in Mandarin.  By the time he’d gotten his meaning across, Jiaying was yelling to him from their house.  She’d been cleaning the house before she told him, and by now, it was too late.

She still smelled like lemon-scented glass cleaner after it was over.

He remembered the baby, coming screaming into the world, delivered in their bathroom.  He’d cried too, of course.

They hadn’t known what they were having, and he’d hoped for a girl, he really had, and he pronounced it to her mother with more pride in his voice than he’d ever had before.  A girl.  A daughter.  Daisy, after his grandmother and the flowers Jiaying had carried at their wedding.

And afterwards, back in their bedroom, sitting on the bed in the warm summer night with the baby in his arms, Jiaying asleep beside him.  The room was quiet, but full quiet, in that it was swelling with their happiness.  It was the first time he’d had his whole family in one place.  He’d been the luckiest man in the world.

But then the second birthday, what would have been Daisy’s first.  Jiaying’s body had been pieced together by then, but her mind hadn’t, and she spent the day dead silent, sitting in bed, eyes glazed over, and Cal cursed the people who had destroyed his family.

By the third, they were halfway across the world, the trail of bodies behind them, and Jiaying, mending the fractures on her heart the wrong way, like a leg break without a cast.  One more vial, she’d say, drink this and you’ll be stronger.  Cal was too afraid of losing her, and his only chance to have his family back, to say anything.

The fourth, fifth, sixth all blurred together in a haze of misery, and violence, but not tears.  Jiaying never once cried for her daughter.  She was angry and bitter; there was no salt for tears.  For a while, Cal wept for the both of them, but by the time Daisy would have turned seven, he’d run out.  Sadness turned to anger, rage, this twisted need to be stronger, to rip apart more people, as if that would bring their family together.

Eventually, Jiaying left.  She couldn’t do it anymore, she said, she couldn’t deal with the person he’d become.  He was alone.  It was July 2nd, and instead of baking a cake for his teenager, instead of wrapping a present specifically from him, he was by himself, on the floor, surrounded by the wreckage of what had been his—their—home.  The unfairness of the situation hit him in waves.  He hated S.H.I.E.L.D., he hated fate, and he hated Jiaying for abandoning him when their daughter still wasn’t protected.

Hours later, when the dusk started to creep into his room, he got up.  The moon was big outside, almost full.  He put the picture of himself and the hours-old baby into the frame he’d bought earlier.  “Happy birthday, Daisy,” he touched the picture with one finger.  There was no answer.

Cal fell asleep in the silence of being alone, thinking of nothing but what had been his best day.

///

_Afterwards, when it was all over, Cal sat on the edge of the bed with the baby—no, his daughter—in his arms.  Outside the bedroom window, the moon rose, full and bright in the darkening sky.  Lights flickered on in their neighbors’ houses as other families made their way to bed.  It was quiet outside, but in a pleasant way, like it was bedtime for the entire world.  He could hear crickets somewhere—he’d tell Jiaying when she woke up, and she’d smile at the omen of good luck.  For now though, it was just him and his daughter, awake together in the twilight._

_The baby blinked up at him from under the knitted hat that was just a little too big.  “Hello, Daisy,” Cal whispered, touching her palm, smiling when he realized that this was maybe the third time he’d used her name.  She wrinkled her nose and grabbed his finger, and his heart swelled.  Settling on his chest, she closed her eyes.  She was perfect, his life was perfect.  He’d never been happier._

_Behind him, Jiaying stirred.  He turned to face her as she shifted on the pillows to an upright position, eyes on her family.  She looked exhausted, leaning against the headboard, but she reached for her baby, and placing a kiss on the baby’s forehead, Cal obliged.  After she was safely in her mother’s arms, Cal leaned forward, kissed his wife.  He pulled away, placing a hand on his daughter’s head.  In the warm, sleepy, sweetness of the summer air, their eyes met.  “Best. Day. Ever,” he said._

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This might not be strictly canon compliant, but for the most part goes along with what we learned in 2x17. I have a ridiculous amount of love for Skye, and for her poor tortured family, so this was clearly the birthday fic for her this year. This arc this season broke me.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed:)


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